|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/in-fact-the-israeli-settlements-were-never-illegal/
Israeli Settlements Were Never Illegal
(Times of Israel) Dr. Richard L. Cravatts - According to Eugene V. Rostow, a legal scholar and one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, "the Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the [British] Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created," and "the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there." According to Professor Emeritus Jerold Auerbach of Wellesley College, "Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank is explicitly protected by international agreements dating from the World War I era, subsequently reaffirmed after World War II, and never revoked since....The [Mandate for Palestine] recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and 'the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.'...This was not framed as a gift to the Jewish people; rather, based on recognition of historical rights reaching back into antiquity, it was their entitlement." The writer is immediate past-president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).